Tuesday, March 14, 2017

I'm working on a new climate bet offer - that for 2017 or for a subsequent year that someone would like to bet with me, that year will be in the record top five years for the type of ENSO year that the particular year ends up being, whether it's El Niño, La Niña, or a moderate year. Quickly perusing the temp record suggests it would be a fairly safe (but not guaranteed) bet although I haven't really analyzed it.

I think it could in some modest way help focus attention on comparing apples to apples rather than stupid finger-pointing at La Niña years being colder than El Niños. Showing almost every year is in the top five is usefully alarming, too.

Haven't quite worked out the details, especially the best data set. Suggestions are welcome, and credible betting opponents are even more welcome.

19 comments:

An interesting bet would be that we never see a year cooler than 1998 again (or in the next decade, to give it a time limit). Given how much of a freak year 1998 was at the time, this does make a point.

Elspi, whereas the "universal declaration of blog commenters rights" states clearly we can change the betting terms, and whereas my proposal is much more understandable, I hereby proclaim my bet is a better deal, and that takers should be aware I reserve the right to replace said carrots with an equivalent prize of equal or lesser value.

Yes, Fernando you're missing the point. 2014 was almost an El Nino year, 2015 and 2016 were very strong El Ninos. Even if we have an El Nino in the 2017-19 period, it's highly unlikely to be as strong.

You are right though that commenters can blatantly disregard the post and write whatever they want to write. Usually practice though is to say something like, "Off-topic regarding your post about comparing apples to apples, but I'd like to compare oranges to apples."

If Fernado & Brian will accapt the judgenent of The World Carrrot Museum I will bet them five pounds of shelled & salted pistachios each that the northern & southern limits of commercial carrot production will move less than one degree of latitude in this growing season or the next.

Russell, you're reminding me of the happy-clapping Bible-thumpers who say that water cannot erode mountains.

Bottom line is, with the realtively short amount of time you have left in the living realm anything and everything will appear "lukewarm". It's simply a matter of reference points and scale.

For people with longer foward-projected spans that you, and for as-yet unborn generations, your perspective is nothing more than quaint wishful thinking, and rather self-indulgent wishful thinking at that.

"That which is thus far demonstrated is Bernard's predeliction for bet-dodging"

Hardly Russell. Check the archives at Deltoid - a few years ago I was quite willing to put down five figures on the Arctic minimum sea ice volume this year, and I would likely have lost it had I been taken up... but probably by not much in the aggregate of the first three dimensions, or in the fourth...

And this was the whole point - to demonstrate my faith in the inexorable trajectory of both human-caused climate change, and its impacts. And to see how confident deniers are in their counter claims...

Let's talk about those impacts Russell, and not about straw men eating frozen carrots. Perhaps you'd like to place a bet on the health of the Great Barrier Reef in, say, two decades?

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett, a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny who finally handed in the keys and retired from his wanna be research university. The students continue to be naive but great people and the administrators continue to vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional without Eli's help. Eli notices from recent political developments that this behavior is not limited to administrators. His colleagues retain their curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they, or at least some of them occasionally heeded his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.